(U.S.): The college's Class of 2014 Class Day celebration either composted or recycled all waste from 1500 participants and reduced bottled water by providing solar-powered water cooler drink stations.

(U.S.): Eliminating staff time it takes to reprogram 6,000 student post office boxes, the new dynamic mail system assigns a unique one-time postal code that corresponds with a postal cubby where packages and letters can be picked up. In this new scheme all bulk mail, fliers and junk mail are eliminated.

The college's Sustainable Conversations group, designed to brainstorm ways to reduce campus waste and productively recycle and reuse discarded materials, set up a bag collection during RecycleMania, which they are using for crochet projects.

Fifteen buildings across campus have recently received water bottle refilling stations, which encourage the campus community to use their own bottles and will decrease the amount bottles recycled and sent to the landfill.

As part of a grant by Keep America Beautiful and The Coca-Cola Foundation, the college will receive 40 additional recycling containers and implement a plan focused on the act of recycling and educational outreach.

Keep America Beautiful's Give and Go 2014 program is a partnership with Goodwill Industries and select colleges and universities to implement effective collection drives during the spring move out period at the end of the term when students leave campus housing. Selected 2014 schools include College of Charleston; Creighton University; Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; Northern Illinois University; Pacific Lutheran University; Radford University; Southern Oregon University; Texas A&M University; Texas Tech University; The University of Toledo; Trinity University; University of Georgia;; University of Louisville; University of Missouri at Kansas City; University of San Diego; and University of St Thomas.

Waiting to see how the administration votes on the matter, students are in favor of using compostable totes carrying a charge $0.70 per bag, which they hope will incent students to use their own reusable bags.

The nationwide college and university competition to recycle and compost material had 461 participating universities that diverted over 89 million pounds during the eight-week period. Antioch University was awarded Grand Champion with the highest percentage of overall recycled waste (93 percent); Kalamazoo College won the Per Capita Classic with over 48 pounds of recyclables per person; and Valencia College won in the Waste Minimization category with 2.87 pounds of waste per person. Rutgers University won the Gorilla Prize, the highest gross tonnage of combined paper, cardboard and bottle and cans regardless of campus population, at 1.53 million pounds.

Recently installed into an existing university dining hall, the new food pulper/extractor takes pre and post-consumer food waste, breaks it down into small pieces, and then the material is hauled to the university's arboretum to be mixed with wood chips to create compost.

The university's Student Government Association partnered with other student organizations for Adopt-A-Hallway, a program designed to increase waste diversion, and new recycling-specific dumpsters have been placed across campus allowing for a more efficient diversion and pick up process.

The university's Hahnemann Campus combined multiple medical supply rooms to reduce waste from expired materials and implemented a process change that allows for the removal of "blue wrap" before surgery, which thwarts contamination, so that it may be recycled.

The university recently initiated the collection of plastic film to further its waste reduction efforts after a student brought forth the idea from having helped the local hospital reduce its plastic film waste stream.

Attempting to bolsters its efforts to reduce waste by 50 percent over the next three years, the university's Sustainability Office will sift through select recycling bins across campus to identify commonly tossed items that cause contamination of the recyclables.

After a 2013 campus waste audit revealed that 36 percent of the material sent to the landfill could be composted, the university recently signed a new custodial contract that allows the campus community access to food scrap collection bins in departmental common areas.

The university's Sustainability commission has recently been handing out free reusable containers, along with posting fliers, that attempt to reduce the amount of styrofoam containers coming from on-campus food trucks.

The university's Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling implemented the Pizza Box Composting Project, which seeks to decrease compostable waste on campus and encourage students to pay more attention to the importance of composting.

Sustainable Gamedays, sponsored by BASF, is a series of eight men and women's basketball games in which videos featuring facts about sustainability and organics recycling show on the arena screens, and demonstrates to game-goers how to use the many zero waste stations placed around the arena for recycling and composting.

(United States): PepsiCo's Dream Machine Recycling Initiative encourages participating colleges and universities to increase recycling rates by using its kiosk to collect plastic and aluminum beverage bottles and cans. The top five schools collecting the highest average amount of containers per kiosk are Mountwest College, Joliet Junior College, Rider University, University of Pittsburgh and Florida International University.

(United States): A student in the university's College of Design, Construction and Planning has started a 10-bin collection system in an effort to promote the activities of the Student Compost Cooperative whose long-term goal is to establish compost collection bins across campus.

Attempting to divert waste throughout the year from the landfill, a permanent collection bin holds the unwanted items until they are taken to the store where the campus community can pick things up for free.

Supporting the university's sustainability goals, the university's Office of Admissions unveiled a new online system that allows applicants to track their application, and apply for scholarships and residence.

Attempting to raise awareness of how much is thrown away, a campus recycling group collected and sorted residence hall waste to create a monster, and labeled the visual display with how much waste an average person produces over a certain amount of time.

(U.S.): Continuing to work toward its goal of zero waste by 2020, the university partnered with a for-profit clothing recycler to place collection bins for clothing, linens, shoes and accessories from the campus community.

(Malaysia): In a strategic effort to make its campus more sustainable, the university's Environmental Management System will be trained to implement the recycling initiative, conduct an environmental audit, and organize the first regional conference on sustainability.

Beginning in January 2014, the university's Social Justice and Sustainability team is collecting a variety of packaging materials that are currently not recycled, such as chip bags and toothpaste tubes, in an effort to increase its waste diversion.

Students from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry are constructing a new facility for a campus-wide aerobic compost system that aids the composting process in colder months.

(U.S.): Agreeing to contribute to campus sustainability projects, the university's beverage contract funded each of the 13 newly installed, custom-designed bins, each made from 1,550 plastic milk jugs.

Partnering with a private business, the community college's Culinary Arts Institute is now a Landfill-Free Enterprise, which means it uses all trash, recycling and food trimmings for energy or materials.

Striving to meet the University of California system's zero waste commitment by 2020, the recent student audit revealed a multitude of plastics in the waste stream. This new data will be helpful to the university's recent commitment to Plastics Disclosure Project, which tracks the lifecycle of plastics used on campus and pledges to reduce plastic waste.

Student members of the university's Environmental Action Committee recently kicked off the Beyond the Bottle campaign with student signatures leading up to a ballot referendum to ban the sale of disposables.

In a collaborative effort to divert material from landfills, the 2013 Fall Festival, which hosts a high number of new students, seeks to educate each other about the university's commitment to zero waste by 2020. The 2013 Fall Festival event diverted 88 percent of its waste from the landfill.

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The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is a membership association of colleges & universities, businesses, and nonprofits who are working together to lead the sustainability transformation. Learn more about AASHE's mission.